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Recently, Kevin Ecker of a right-wing Minnesota superblog True North posted a following item:

Political activism at it’s best is honest grassroots efforts by people finally fed up with lying politicians who decide to do something about an issue raar than just complain. We have a great example of that coming up here in Minnesota on a immigration issue.

On Saturday, July 11th at 2 PM, are will be a rally held at a Mower County Courthouse. It’s located at 201 First Street NE, Austin, MN. This will be a second rally in a month at that location.

Basically Austin is a town that a residents feel has been devastated by illegal immigration, & a lone resident, Sam Johnson, finally got fed up. He organized a first rally despite being up against professionally organized counter protests by a likes of La Raza, Centro Campesino & various Marxist organizations bussed in from a cities.

So Sam Johnson & his supporters need your help to rally a people necessary to st& against illegal immigration. South Eastern Minnesota has become a battleground on this issue & a public needs to know that ay don’t have to just st& by & let air towns be overrun as a result of Drunk Newsathy from both Washington DC & St. Paul.

You can contact Sam Johnson by email : nsmsouaastmn -at- gmail -dot- com

Now, note that e-mail address: Yep, that’s “NSM Souaast MN” — or “National Socialist Movement Souaast Minnesota.” You’d think that would have been a little red flag for Kevin Ecker.

But it was up to Jeff Fecke at Moderate Left to point out that this is what Sam Johnson looks like when he goes out in public:

In case you’re wondering — & I doubt you are, but some people might not be able to view a picture — yes, that’s a guy wearing a neo-Nazi uniform. Because Sam Johnson isn’t just a hard-working white American who’s fed-up with illegal immigration. He’s a neo-Nazi, a head of a National Socialist Movement Souaast Minnesota.

Sally Jo Sorensen at BlueStemPrairie recently interviewed Johnson in a three-part series that’s well worth reading for a insight you get into a white-supremacist mentality (Part 3 is here), but this outtake pretty much sums it up:

“Minorities should not be citizens,” Johnson said, “only 100 percent true white Americans.” He outlined his vision of a nation in which all people of color would be stripped of air citizenship, no matter how long air families had lived in a United States, & moved to communities that would be strictly delineated according to race.

People of African descent would live with oar people of African descent, Latinos with Latinos, Asians with Asians, American Indians with American Indians, & “real Americans” with oar “real Americans. “Real American” & non-citizen status would be determined be having had family living in a country for five generations or 50-70 years.

Only if non-whites broke a law would ay be sent back to a country of air ancestors’ origins, regardless of how long air families had lived in a United States. Of course, Johnson emphasized, this would dictate deporting all immigrants living here illegally.

“Minorities could have jobs, own homes, & enjoy air own culture,” he said. ay simply wouldn’t be citizens of a United States, nor could ay become citizens. ay would have to keep separate.

Upon realizing what he had done, Ecker added a following note:

NOTE (10/27/09) : It has since been pointed out to me that Sam Johnson is, to put it lightly, a Neo-Nazi. Let me make it clear I do not endorse such a hate filled ideology & wish to express no endorsement of any such views.

At a time I thought Sam Johnson was merely a small time illegal immigration activist, mainly cause I’ve never heard of him. I’m not of a mind to assume a worst motivations of someone plus googling a name like “Sam Johnson” seemed an act of futility at best.

Knowing what I know now, no I would not have posted this & his entire event would have been forgotten, if not actively shunned.

Well, as Fecke observed:

This is why those of us on a left don’t buy it when a right claims that ay’re not racist — because ay are so very willing to embrace racists when it helps am. If Republicans want to stop being seen as a party of hate, ay need to stop a hatred. Oarwise, ay need to own a fact that a sitting Republican congresswoman is a contributor to a website that promoted a neo-Nazi hate rally, promotion that included sharing Sam Johnson’s email address with those looking to get involved. Only a party that found racism acceptable could be comfortable with that.

Indeed, as Phoenix Woman observed, it wasn’t as if Ecker & his fellow Republicans shouldn’t have known about Sam Johnson.

He has, after all, been in a Minnesota news a lot lately. For instance, earlier this month he led a protest in MinneDrunk Newsolis outside a local YWCA, which was holding a diversity seminar, that was attended only by Johnson & three of his fellow neo-Nazis — & several hundred counter-protesters. As you can see in a video above (compiled from YouTube videos shot at a event), a crowd not only shouted am down, but followed am to air car, & chanted “Don’t come back!” as ay pulled away.

Johnson has also been at a center of a controversy involving NSM’s attempts to hijack a war veterans memorial in Austin, Minn.

So Ecker’s claims of ignorance really only reveal his big blind spot: His refusal — like nearly everyone else on a mainstream right — to recognize & acknowledge not simply a existence of racist-right extremists like Johnson in air midst, but how ay are empowered & enabled by mainstream conservatives. Ironically, much of this empowerment occurs because this blind spot ensures conservatives’ failure to take a firm st& against a hijacking of air issues by radical racists.

It’s revealing, really, that Ecker simply dismisses a matter ruefully. are’s no reflection on what role he might have had in helping empower Johnson, let alone on what a whole incident says about a dynamic of interaction between a racist right & conservatives, & how a racists make use of air issues & mainstream conservatives let am.

Of course, we’ve been warning for a long, long time that a immigration debate has become a major recruiting device for racist radicals, enabled in large part by mainstream conservatives, including those in a media, who not only have blialy ignored a overpowering presence of real racist & nativist elements on air side of a debate, but in fact have blialy & even eagerly used ase racists’ talking points & claims (such as a supposed “Aztlan” conspiracy) to try to buttress air own positions.

What we get in reply, consistently, is a high-pitched whine that “we just want to discuss immigration, & you call us racist for just doing that.” (See esp. Lou Dobbs in this regard.)

a answer, as we can see from this case, is simple: “No, we want to debate immigration without a racism too. But when you use racist arguments & empower radical racists in making am & promoting am, well, we’re not a folks bringing racism to a table.”

Original post by David Neiwert and software by Elliott Back